Report Calls for Permanent
Indigent Defense Entity,
Overhaul of Current System

A COMMISSION CHARGED WITH
examining New York State’s
indigent defense services has
recommended a total restructuring
of the system based on its finding
that the current model — a patchwork
of programs — is inadequately
funded and dysfunctional.

“Nothing short of major, far-reaching
reform can ensure that New
York meets its constitutional and
statutory obligations to provide
quality representation to every indigent
person accused of a crime or
offense,” the June report states.
“There must be a statewide defender
system. Only through such a system
can constitutional mandates for
quality indigent defense representation
be realized.”

The time for further study
is over. The crisis in indigent
representation in this state
is a well-documented fact.
The time for action is now.

New York is one of only six states
without some statewide oversight in
this area.

The report isn’t the first to examine
the adequacy of indigent legal
representation in criminal cases in
the state, and it chronicles the history
of attempts by various organizations
over the past 40 years to call
attention to the problem. To assist
the commission in its work, the Spangenberg
Group, a nationally-recognized
research and consulting firm
specializing in indigent defense systems,
conducted the most comprehensive
study of indigent defense
representation ever undertaken in
the state.

Problems were not confined to
particular areas of the state. “[T]he
abuses were widespread and across
the state in terms of inadequately
trained attorneys, overloaded in
terms of caseloads of institutional
defenders. These defects were widespread
throughout the city and
state,” said Brooklyn Law School
Professor William E. Hellerstein, the
commission’s co-chair and former
long-time chief of the criminal
appeals bureau of the Legal Aid Society
of New York. “I’d been involved
in criminal defense more than 21
years and it surprised me and it surprised
most of my colleagues,” he
said. “We were taken aback by the
breadth and depth of the problem.”

The report calls for immediate
action. “The time for further study
is over. The crisis in indigent representation
in this state is a well-documented
fact. The time for action
is now.”

The proposed statewide defender
office would be created by a permanent
indigent defense commission
with overall responsibility for the
operation of the system including
the appointment of a chief defender
and determination of the locations
of regional and local defender
offices. The proposal also calls for
the appointment of regional, deputy
and local defenders, as well as a conflict
defender. The members of the
permanent commission would be
appointed by the governor, the chief
judge and the legislature.

Funding for indigent defense
should be provided by the legislature
from the state’s general fund, not
from the counties. “New York’s experience
since 1965 has demonstrated
that a system of minimal state funding
with primary financial responsibility
at the county level does not
work,” the report states. “It results in
an inadequate and in many
respects, an unconstitutional
level of representation
and creates significant disparities
in the quality of representation
based on no
factor other than geography.”

The permanent commission
would be charged with
pursuing adequate funding
for the system’s operations. “I guess
it would cost an initial $50 million.
But say it costs $100 million — we
have a Constitution and people are
being denied their constitutional
rights. We keep talking about money,
but the constitutional rights of
individuals don’t come cheap and
they must be maintained,” said commission
co-chair Burton B. Roberts,
former administrative judge of Bronx
County and also a former Bronx district
attorney.